When you are seen on “Saturday Night Live” nearly every week, as Marcello Hernández is, you are bound to attract a few haters.
Some don’t like it when your breakout character, Domingo, appears in the opening sketch of the show. Some gripe when you imitate a white guy with an exaggeratedly dorky accent, and others grumble when your dialogue is in Spanish.
And who knows how any of these viewers will react when Hernández tells them, in a new Netflix stand-up special, that they shouldn’t treat Latinos like depraved criminals because, as he puts it, “Latinos do fun, exciting crimes”?
Sometimes Hernández is dealing directly with these detractors on social media. (For a time, he said, his mother would chase them off using a fake Instagram account, though not at his instruction.) Other times, he is simply conjuring them in his mind for motivational purposes.
When I asked him if he’d come into “S.N.L.” with a hunger to contribute, Hernández said he’d been forged by a process that inoculated him against critics.
“If they don’t like this version of me,” he said, sipping a cup of tea at a midtown Manhattan steakhouse, “I wonder what they would have said about 2020 Marcello.”
“If you don’t like this,” he said, leaning across the table and widening his eyes for emphasis, “you have no idea — this is the best it’s been.”
In 2020 Hernández, a newly minted college graduate who had given up his lifelong love of soccer to pursue a performing career, saw the comedy industry effectively shut down by the pandemic. Reduced to selling medication by phone while he lived with his mother, he feared his showbiz dreams were over before he even got a chance to pursue them.
Hernández, now 28, bounced back. He hustled his way into standup gigs, opening for comics like Tim Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried and Mark Viera. In 2022 he was selected for the New Faces of Comedy lineup at Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, and he was cast on “S.N.L.” later that year.
At the start of his standup special “American Boy,” which debuts Jan. 7, he dances victoriously with his mother on the stage of the Olympia Theater in Miami. But the precarious sensation of dangling from a bottom rung is never far from his mind.
“I always remember that feeling,” he said. “That feeling 100 percent drives me very hard.”
Hernández was pushing himself hard on a recent Tuesday, doing double duty between an “S.N.L.” writing session and postproduction work on “American Boy.” He spoke with the intensity of someone who has gotten many of the things he always wanted and now realizes he must be in many places at once to satisfy the obligations that come with them.
“American Boy” lets Hernández introduce himself beyond “S.N.L.” It tells the story of his upbringing: He was born in Miami and was a handful while being raised mostly by his mother, who fled Cuba, and lived in Spain and Dominican Republic before immigrating to the United States.
He recounts getting diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. As Hernández says in the routine, “Everybody told me I have A.D.D., and I told my mom, ‘I have A.D.D.,’ and she said ‘no.’ So, I don’t have A.D.D.”
Though his mother is a prominent foil in his standup, Hernández spoke admiringly of her in our conversation.
“You can’t really judge her, because she was doing her best,” he said. “She was learning the language, learning the culture, trying to figure it all out. And her kid was kind of a little psycho.”
In an email, Hernández’s mother, Isabel Cancela, wrote that she was proud to be a character in his comedy.
“When your children honor you in their own way, it feels like a pat on the back from God telling you that you did a good job even after everything you had to go through,” she said.
Hernández’s parents split up by the time he was 5. He remains close with his father, who is from the Dominican Republic, and whom Hernández credits for his sense of humor. Hernández explained that Dominican comedy was distinguished by “a lot of sarcasm.” “We speak very fast,” he said. “It’s a big personality.”
As a student, Hernández showed promise as a soccer player. But a high-school drama teacher introduced him to John Leguizamo’s character piece “Mambo Mouth,” setting Hernández on a path to a state-level championship at a Florida student drama competition and dreams of stage stardom.
After graduating from John Carroll University in Ohio and riding out the pandemic, Hernández spent many months sleeping on couches and selling tickets for stand-up shows to strangers on MacDougal Street in New York, in return for precious minutes of stage time at clubs like the Comedy Cellar.
When he joined the “S.N.L.” cast in 2022, he wasted no time in making his presence felt. His repertoire of memorable characters includes Domingo, the not-so-secret lover of a bride (Chloe Fineman) whose friends sing parodic pop songs describing their trysts; and the Movie Guy, a cinema usher who discusses films he hasn’t seen in broken English.
Lorne Michaels, the “S.N.L.” creator and executive producer, said that Hernández was “the real thing.”
“He was brought up well, he has real values, and he’s solid,” Michaels said. “I don’t want to gush, but he’s gotten better every year.”
Domingo has yielded dividends for Hernández at “S.N.L.” and outside of the show. Last year, he played him in a routine at a Sabrina Carpenter concert that became a viral sensation on social media. He also reprised the character on the “SNL50” anniversary special, as well as in a rare nonpolitical opening sketch from earlier this season.
In the months ahead, Hernández will be seen and heard in films like “72 Hours,” a Netflix comedy starring Kevin Hart and “Shrek 5.”
Hernández was reluctant to take credit for the Domingo phenomenon. “I am simply a button on this jacket,” he said. But he acknowledged that “it pushed my career further along and got more people to get to know me. A lot of people still call me Domingo on the street.”
“I want to make it clear,” he added, “I do have a name.”
Hernández came prepared to defend his Movie Guy character, whom some viewers have criticized as an ethnic stereotype. In comedy, he said, the idea of “a fun, dumb, loud guy is not new — it’s been done for years.”
He said the Movie Guy was inspired by the kinds of malaprops he’d heard his own family members use, like an aunt who wished him well at the start of his comedy career.
“She said, ‘One day, you’re going to be like Matthew Naconifer,’” he said, recalling her mispronunciation of “McConaughey.” “What am I supposed to do? Lie? We are who we are.”
Michaels explained that, like all the other cast members on “S.N.L.”, Hernández was a resource who needed to be used strategically, and that it was the show’s responsibility to find big episodes and breakout roles for all its performers.
“Because he played soccer — and I go to baseball games with him — he understands the notion of a team,” Michaels said. “A team needs the other players, and you want them to be good, too.”
Hernández also found himself an unwilling participant in a social media video posted by the White House earlier this month, which used promotional footage he recorded with Carpenter when she hosted “S.N.L.” in October.
In the original footage, Carpenter said she needed to “arrest someone for being too hot”; in response, Hernández playfully extended his wrists and said, “Oh well, I turn myself in.”
The video posted by the White House altered Carpenter’s dialogue to say she wanted to arrest someone for being “too illegal”; Hernández’s answer was left unchanged and was followed by footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pursuing and arresting people.
Asked how he felt about seeing himself in the White House video, Hernández took a moment to measure his words.
“They’re going to do what they’re going to do,” he said.
He added: “I like to focus on my work. I’m not going to stop. I’ll take whatever comes with it.”
In “American Boy,” Hernández tries not to wade too far into current debates over immigration. He claims to know little about politics or law, but he recognizes how many important people in his life have been immigrants, and he laments how immigrants are demonized. As he says in the special, “Maybe we are doing crime, but the biggest crime that we’re doing is working illegally, which is a pretty solid crime.”
In our conversation, Hernández said he could never be made to feel ashamed of his upbringing. And he thinks the scrutiny the “S.N.L.” spotlight has brought will subside as he introduces himself to audiences more fully.
“I’m a kid of immigrants,” he said. “I’m the first American in my family. So do what you will. I’m going to keep working, and I’m going to be the best version of myself. And I think the more people learn about me, the less I’ll need to answer.”
Dave Itzkoff is a former Times culture reporter.
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